Ahmed Rasheed

Suicide bombers and other attackers killed at least 62 people in apparently coordinated attacks on Iraqi security forces in Iraq on Wednesday.

Iraq auctioned off eight giant oil and gas fields on Tuesday in its first major tender since the 2003 invasion.

The battle for the heart of the South African university goes as far back as the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) in 1996.

The head of the Iraqi Parliament's biggest Sunni Muslim bloc was killed at a mosque on Friday, officials said.

Iraq and the US have agreed that a planned security pact will require all US troops to leave by the end of 2011, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says.

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened on Tuesday to end a truce he imposed on his militia last year, raising the prospect of worsening violence in Iraq just hours before top US officials testified on Iraq in Washington. Al-Sadr urged his Mehdi Army to ''continue your jihad and resistance'' against US forces.

Turkey declined on Wednesday to give Baghdad a timetable for the withdrawal of troops fighting Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, resisting pressure from the United States and other allies to end the offensive quickly. Thousands of Turkish troops crossed the border on Thursday to root out Kurdistan Workers' Party fighters.

An Iraqi man stands with his hands up in surrender, surrounded by an American soldier, Iraqi security forces, a militiaman, an al-Qaeda fighter and a faceless thug. ''Hands up! Legs up! Head down!'' they all bark at him as the cartoon takes a satirical swipe at how poorly ordinary Iraqis are treated.

A Sunni Arab tribal leader instrumental in driving al-Qaeda out of Iraq's Anbar province was killed by a bomb on Thursday, hours before United States President George Bush endorsed limited US troop cuts in Iraq. Abdul Sattar Abu Risha died in an attack on his car near his home in Ramadi, capital of Anbar.

An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence against Saddam Hussein's cousin, widely known as Chemical Ali, for masterminding a genocide campaign against Iraq's Kurds in the 1980s. ''The nine appeal judges have upheld the death sentence against Ali Hassan al-Majeed,'' the chief prosecutor in the trial, Munkith al-Fatlawi, said.

Gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped five Britons from a government building in Baghdad on Tuesday and the deaths of 10 United States soldiers were announced, making May the deadliest month this year for the US military. The gunmen seized the Britons from a Finance Ministry building in eastern Baghdad.

Multiple car bombs exploded at about the same time and killed at least 40 people in a mainly Shi'ite town north of Baghdad on Thursday, officials said. A hospital source said in addition to the 40 dead, at least 80 more people were wounded in the blasts. One witness reported seeing at least eight people killed in one of the blasts.